Some books are entertaining, some useful, but once in a while once comes across a book that can be classified as “life changing”. How to Read better and Faster by Norman Lewis is one such book. Don’t be deceived by it’s simplistic title. The book is NOT an English lesson book that teaches one to read, but how one can increase one’s reading speed from 200 wpm (words per minute) to 500 wpm to even 1,000 wpm & 2,000 wpm. When I started the book I would crawl at 200 to 250 wpm, which Norman Lewis says is the average reading rate. And now after just a couple of months, I easily cruise at 450 to 500 wpm. That means it takes me now half the time to finish the morning paper, emails, letters, office documents and also the occassional novel!

In the words of a reviewer of this book at Amazon.com, “The basis behind the author’s theory is that speed reading, high concentration and material retention are all linked. You can’t do one without the other very effectively. So, if you start reading fast, you are forced to concentrate and this increases retention. The high concentration that is induced when you try to read faster results in some interesting physiological changes in the brain where the memory of what you are reading gets etched more permanently than the times when you don’t have high concentration. This is not explained in the book, but I came to that conclusion after I became curious about what makes the book’s techniques so effective and researched deeper into the subject. I don’t want to go too much into the book’s techniques because I think they are more effective if you read them directly from the book for the first time.”

I couldn’t put it better myself :-)

Happy reading :-)
Arif

Edit: On popular request, I’ve uploaded here, the image of the Flashmaster card that came with the book.

hi…i just bought this book. but its a very old copy and apparently it originally came with a “flashmaster” card. i dont know what that is and it makes it difficult to proceed. could you describe it to me so i can make one myself? thanx

Unfortunately no, don’t have an e-copy of these books. But if you let me know where you’re staying, let me see if I can send you a copy. The dimensions of these cards will be in your email inbox real shortly.

The book’s quite easily available in India. It’s certainly quite easy to get in Bangalore. If you’re in US, I’ve heard of an equally good or better book out there. It’s Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump.

The flashmaster card would not come much in use until you have the book. It can be used specifically with the book only. Will email it to you anyway.

How can I obtain the flashmeter card. I have bought the book HOW TO READ BETTER AND FASTER throw amazon.com, but it doesn´t bring the card. could you email me an image of that to use it during my exercises?

Probably, this is the book I was looking for in my unconcious mind.Really, it’s better than I can even dreamed of! Thanks Norman for producing such a nice gift for us. Throughout my life Many books have changed my ideas about things around me and may be this book is one of them.

By the way Anup, I heard this really good book review by the celebrated Robert Adams on the Book Brick Lane, which I think you may enjoy. It’s about a Bangladeshi family, a daughter who followed her fate and went to London and other who fought it and remained in Dhaka. You can watch it by clicking here.

I got the book in front of me now. I feel that there’s a slight misprint. What I did is that I had the “phrase arrow just above the first word inthe starting on page 57″ as the book suggests. But instead of having the “Word Arrow squarely meet the arrow on the page”, I think Norman meant the “Fixate here arrow on the card to squarely meet the arrow on the page.”

If read that way the instructions seem to make perfect sense. The rest of the instructions seem quite straight-forward.

Hi Arif,
I agree with you. It is truly a great book.
I wrote a small windows based program in an attempt to duplicate the function of the flashmeter card.
You can download it from herehttp://www.nathaniyer.com

Hi,
I am searching for this book for quite some time,but no luck.I know this blog is quite old now,but if anyone has found this book in Dhaka,i would appreciate if he or she could email me where to find this….or if anyone could send it to me then that would also be good.

I think this book will be very helpful to every students.I came to know that the theme of that book is to read more and more word to read in a minutes.Such as if i read 400(wpm) i will be 2 times ahead then who read 200(wpm).My target is to read 2500 (wpm)